Miss Philomena

The yellow bustle is (almost) wearable! I might be pinning myself into it tomorrow, because the thought of making all those buttonholes right now is not a fun one. >_> But otherwise, it's good to go~

Getting closer with the yellow dress! Originally I wanted to trim it with a nice cornflower blue, but I haven't been able to find ribbon the right color here, and I don't have time to go to either Philly or NYC and pick some up. So I'll just go with white instead, It'll be the flip of all those sheer white gowns trimmed in yellow.

So today I did the overskirt and started working on ruffles. I have the ruffle for the overskirt ready to be put on it, but I haven't pinned it on yet, let alone sewn it. But have a picture anyway! Or better yet, two~

 

I can't decide yet if I want to bustle the overskirt or not. I think it'll have to wait until I have my ruffles and basque to decide, so I can see the finished look.

Also, you can see just how sheer the fabric is in the bodice. I need a corset cover to hide my black corset.

So I discovered working for a couple hours in the hot attic while still sick is a bad idea. Still feeling a little shakey, even an hour later. x_x

But I started on my next project, a summer bustle gown, even though summer is almost over. Summer weather isn't, at any rate. I'm using this fabric, which is a yellow and shiny sheer plaid. (Check? Windowpane? What exactly is this pattern?) I dug out my bustle skirt pattern and somehow my side back piece is missing. dklgjsklgnlskdjglsdkng So I cheated and just cut a slightly longer side front for the side back and all is good. The center back is just a full width of fabric, like I usually cut, though I still need to trim down the top into a curve. I cut this one short too, with only a sweep rather than a long train like I usually do. I've only got the back half of the skirt so far, and because it's so sheer I did French seams for it.

I plan to put ruffles the whole way up the back before I add the front half of the skirt. I just need to decide how long I want the ruffles to be. There's going to be one deep ruffle going the whole way around the bottom of the skirt, then tiers over it on the back. I'm not sure if they should be all the same size or get smaller as they go up, but I might play around and pin some of different sizes on. We'll see.

In other parts of the dress, I think I'm going to do a bodice with a belt and a basque, and I'm still thinking about what to do with the skirt front.

( a slightly crappy pic of the plain skirt back )